Friday, February 5, 2016

Yes, Amazon is my Friend: Part 2

So I mentioned in a previous post how Amazon, very kindly, helps out low selling authors and newly published books by calculating sales rank based on factors other than total sales (including “velocity”) and how it breaks out a large variety of categories to give as many books as possible a high ranking in at least some subcategory. This benefits readers because if they are looking for something very specific they can more easily check over frequently churning subgenre ranks, but it also really helps authors who can get noticed and claim some minor bragging rights by being close to the top (if only briefly) in some tiny corner of the giant Amazon universe.

So it is with great pleasure that I can follow up my last post and announce that out of all the 5 million plus ebooks on Amazon, my newest publication, MacToons: A MacPaint Tribute to the Original Macintosh has raced up to #19 less than a month after it was published! Of course, its #19 in “Kindle Short Reads/44-65 pages/Humor&Entertainment.”

I had no idea Amazon even had a category for “short reads,” let alone short reads that just happened to be between 44-65 pages. But I am very grateful to be in the top twenty of anything. Thanks Amazon! You’re my best friend!

So if you’re looking for a humorous and entertaining short read exactly between 44-65 pages (30 pages of which are delightful cartoon strips) and you’ve read the other 18 higher ranked already, why not check out MacToons? For less than a buck, I promise you’ll get a few laughs. (Note: that was what is called a "call to action.") Maybe we can push this thing up to #1!

CLICK TO BUY NOW!

UPDATE: MacToons is now #3 on Amazon's Hot New Releases (short reads), which is another subcategory of a subcategory. Hope it doesn't sound like I'm bragging. The total sales aren't much and I'm barely making a few dollars. But I just find this all interesting in terms of exposure for a new author. Amazon, for whatever reason, is really trying to sell this sucker for me, highlighting in in several places on their huge website. Thanks Amazon!

UPDATE 2: Okay, so the sales stopped and I never got to #1. But that's fine. It was a fun ride while it happened. There have been few sales after that first little splurt and I'll probably go back to my original plan to make MacToon's permafree. Again, this seems to confirm how much support Amazon gives to new releases. So if you want to keep sales activity in your Kindle account, you really are going to have to regularly publish new works.

About Me

Mackay Bell is a technology and new media consultant and blogger based in Los Angeles. He was abandoned as a small child and raised by wolves. Fortunately, they were tech savvy wolves that had a nice apartment in San Francisco. He grew up to be a computer consultant and now works in media. His debut novel, Eve's Hungry, about a world war between Apple and Google, is now available on Amazon.